I was so busy telling you about our Arkansas Trip that I haven’t told you about our trip to visit family in Chautauqua, New York. My sister Leslie and her family own a house in Sherman, New York, which is near the Chautauqua Music Festival where her husband works in the summers. This is the third year in a row we’ve gone out to visit, and it was lovely.
I won’t do a play by play, but instead share some pictures and tell you a few things we did.
Walked around the grounds of the Chautauqua Institute–this is near the belltower.Hiked down to the Chautauqua Gorge but it was too watery to go further, so we went back up and hiked along the Cusamano Trail instead for a few miles.
I believe this was at Long Point State Park, where we walked around a little bit.
Not pictured: Southern Tier Brewery Company–great place to have some beer and some food, nice patio.
Luca driving a wooden car around.
We didn’t go on the Chautauqua Belle, but maybe another time. We walked along the Lake aways from here, and then got ice cream nearby. We eat more ice cream while in Chautauqua than we do all year long!
The grounds of the Institute again, you can see the Bell Tower on the left.
Luca wearing cool sunglasses for the Fourth of July.
We walked around the Audubon Community Nature Center in Jamestown, NY and saw lots of birds and chipmunks.
\
I taught Luca awhile back to show us his “bebo” or belly button and never tire of asking.
We also got ice cream at Bemus Point, had dinner at a place in Sherman called Pine Junction, lunch at Stedman Corners Cafe, and coffee and lunch at Crown Street Roasting Company. And we ate some delicious meals at “home” as well.
Leslie went above and beyond with this meal!
It was a week long trip, which was pretty long, but it was nice to spend time with the kids and just hang out and relax. There are always more things to do next time!
We stopped at Taco Johns on our way home!
Anyway, then we got back home to this…
What else have I been up to? We had our annual fireworks barbecue, which is a cookout we have the night of the Sublette Park/Hill fireworks. We weren’t sure if it was happening due to COVID, but it did, and it was small but fun. We’ve been eating out a bit more than before, though trying to keep cooking, so usually just once or twice a week. I’ve been keeping up on the garden and just pickled a whole bunch of green beans today, three jars from the garden! (I make dilly beans, which might be my favorite sort of pickle.)
I played an outdoor concert with Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis, which was held in a parking lot…have I played a concert in a parking lot before? I want to say, yes, actually. I played a concert with my band as well, in a front yard as part of the Kingsbury Ensemble’s A Little Lawn Music.
That made for a busy weekend, so I was happy to have this weekend entirely off. I don’t have the energy I used to have…or the desire to run around as much. I have been trying to be mindful of that when accepting jobs for the fall, how much I teach now in addition to how much I do actually really enjoy having some downtime. I’m behind on gardening tasks anyway!
I’ve been doing a lot of reading of course, and thought I’d share some of what I’ve been reading lately for you to consider:
Books I really enjoyed: Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins, Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner, American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins,, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian, These Tangled Vines by Julianne Maclean, Anxious People by Frederick Bachman, 28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand, Nomadland by Jessica Bruder
Books I liked well enough: Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline, The Elephant of Belfast by S. Kirk Walsh, The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian, The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas, Milk Fed by Melissa Broder, We Love You Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge
Cozy Mysteries I enjoyed: The Bennett Sisters Series by Lise McClendon
Nonfiction I found interesting: The Body, A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson, How to be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman
I know I didn’t give you any information about the books, but you can read a bit of them online 🙂
Anyway, we have some interesting plans coming up: biking tomorrow on the Katy Trail (at least that’s the plan), a camping trip to Hawn State Park, various family members visiting. We also bought tickets for Jazz and for the Symphony for the fall so that’s going to be different than this year! Work wise things are still pretty busy these next two weeks because I’m doing another online seminar (I am obsessed with learning right now) and teaching as well. I am taking a whole week off in August though, just to relax, and we are getting away for one more weekend before school starts up again. I don’t want to think about summer ending, but I know that life moves on…and I do love fall weather. I am hoping to get a better life-work balance going forward, though I know that is unlikely to happen while I have my early morning school job.
What have you been up to? Read any interesting books to share? Done any interesting things that you recommend to others?
That leaves our last two nights on the Arkansas journey, two nights south of Fayetteville at a lovely airbnb in a bit of a rural area, but not as rural as in the Ozarks, since it was about 15 minutes drive to Fayetteville.
I had forgotten until we were getting close that our last airbnb had not only a hottub, but a pool as well. It was a hot day, so we thought we’d check in, get unpacked, and go for a swim before dinner.
What a beautiful building this was!
The cottage was designed by a couple who were an architect and landscape designers teaching at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, so it was gorgeous and well designed.
And the pool was lovely!
We had a nice swim and enjoyed just relaxing in the pool. We learned that Louie can’t float on his back–I tried to teach him, but while I can float on my back, I cannot teach somebody else to do so.
We had a dinner reservation at Vetro 1925 in Fayetteville, so we got cleaned up and headed to Fayetteville a little early. I wanted to see the house where the Clintons lived while they were in Fayetteville–it was technically a museum but not open anymore, partly due to COVID, partly (it seemed) due to state budget cuts.
It looked like an easy walk there from where we parked near the restaurant, but it ended up being really hilly, up and down and up and down, sometimes very steep!
It was sort of anticlimatic when we got there! And I’m not sure what the deal is with the pig.
It is a pretty house though, and I’m sorry it wasn’t open as a museum.
Then we got to back to where the restaurant and car were, and got seated ahead of our reservation.
Wow! This meal did not disappoint. We split a bunch of things, which we like to do, and while I was marginally annoyed that they charged us for splitting, when we never actually asked to split and only said we would be sharing everything, I decided that was a small thing. (To be clear: we shared about 4 dishes, and said we were sharing, and they brought some of the dishes on two plates, which we did not ask for, and they did charge us extra for that.)
Not pictured, the salad course. Everything was tasty, though the tiramisu was a bit over the top and might have focused more on something other than chocolate syrup…
We went back to the cabin or whatever you want to call it after dinner and relaxed. I actually don’t recall if we got in the hottub or not, but I bet we did.
The next morning we were heading to Bentonville and the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art. We ate oatmeal in the kitchen, made coffee, and headed out.
This is where the day got very Walmart centered. Bentonville is where Walmart got started and it is a scene there. Mountain biking, tourism, and this gorgeous Museum. I have a lot of feelings about Walmart, few of them good, but we had heard that the Museum was excellent.
I wrote a long rant about Walmart and how they are responsible for so many issues in our country through years of political lobbying, low wages, etc, but I decided to just let it go…I’ll just sum it up to say that I was excited to see the museum because I love art, but I won’t wax poetic over the Waltons for spending a small amount of their fortune on a museum which only improves their social standing. They have a lot of money. I do things for free too and give many charitable donations and I don’t make signs all over my house bragging about it.
ANYWAY sorry about all my soapboxing! Back to the trip report 🙂
I have to say, the Crystal Bridges Museum is really lovely. It’s a little confusing at first, because there is a lot going on between indoor and outdoor paths, a bit of construction, COVID, and a sort of open area you enter without obvious maps or welcome area. But we found our way, first to the outside paths because we were afraid it would start raining soon…
And then we made it inside. The galleries were well laid out, kept things moving while being interesting and informative. We didn’t find the collection to be overwhelmingly large, which was nice. We walked around for a few hours and decided to take a break to have lunch at the cafe, which was very nice.
After lunch, we decided to leave, so we headed to downtown Bentonville to check it out. It was…lovely. Like a disneyland version of what small towns used to look like before Walmart decimated them! So glad they kept one! It was cute and shiny, and full of art and bicycles.
We didn’t get to see the Walmart Museum as I’d hoped, because COVID meant reservations and I hadn’t made one, because my priority had been the art museum–which had originally required reservations as well but then changed recently. We walked around, visited a bike shop, a coffee shop with the worst bathrooms we’d seen in such a nice area for awhile, a fancy Walmart grocery store, and some lovely paths through some Gardens.
We decided to eat an early dinner in Fayetteville, and went to Hugo’s, which was a long running favorite of locals Burger place. It was great! We had a bit of a wait even at 5 pm, but nothing bad at all and we enjoyed the ambience and the food. It felt a bit more “real” than Bentonville, and we appreciated that. I’m sure that Bentonville feel is right for many, just not me.
We enjoyed the hot tub and visited with our host’s horses after dinner, and then watched some tv while it rained a bit outside.
The next morning we headed towards Pea Ridge Military Park, which is an NPS site, so you know it’ll be well done. It was a gross rainy day, so we decided against any hiking, and just visited the Vistor’s Center and then did the loop road. We did pop out at every stop and took short walks as they were there (it wasn’t raining too hard, but it was soggy and buggy for sure). It gets tempting sometimes, to just stay in the car, but we decided since we were there we were going to pop out at every stop. There weren’t any we regretted.
It was interesting to learn about a Civil War Battle and really made me think about how awful War is and how there are many people who glorify violence, when it isn’t that at all. So many soldiers (and civilians) died and were wounded, and for what? Surely there are better ways. There are so many wars going on, right now…it just makes you really think about life, and how so much of what we have in our lives we take for granted and it could all be taken away in an instance.
In any case, we learned quite a bit. The museum in the Visitor’s Center was a nice start, and then the signs and brochure are helpful along the way. We had visited somewhat nearby Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in a previous year, and this was a later battle. If I’m remembering correctly!
Also the Trail of Tears went by here. What a horrible thing that was.
They had all the cannons lined up where they would have been.
There was some nice scenery as well!
The Elkhorn Tavern, which I think was rebuilt for this, but I’m not sure. Sometimes the NPS is sneaky like that, you think something was still there and it is actually a reconstruction, so I don’t know. I could probably research it, but where’s the fun?
Anyway, after visiting Pea Ridge, we hit the road for home. It was about a 4 hour drive home, and we made it by dinner time.
Arkansas was a lovely time. We especially enjoyed our last two airbnb’s, the Buckstaff Bathhouse, Pinnacle Mountain State Park, Little Rock Central NHS, the grounds of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, eating at Brave New Restaurant, visiting Crystal Bridges, eating at Vetro 1925 and Hugo’s, and just generally being away from St Louis! We are sorry that the Bill Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock was closed due to COVID, and that the visitor’s center and museum in Ft. Smith were closed for the same reason as those would have been great to see.
As more time now has passed, I will still say we enjoyed the trip, though we are sad we didn’t get to do a bit camping/out west trip this summer. Arkansas was nice, relaxing, and a lovely place to spend a week. If you are a Missourian especially, I recommend visiting sometime! We have also visited Eureka Springs in the past and it was great.
By many measures summer is already halfway done. I only mention this in order to freak myself out.
I promise I will still tell you about the portion of our trip to Fayetteville and Bentonville, but life got too busy! I just got back from a trip to visit my sister and her family, and I was busy doing very little there but the time flew by. Before I left I did a very intense online conference on Paul Rolland Pedagogy while doing a normal week of teaching and life…so things were a bit slammed.
The pandemic has brought some great online educational opportunities into my life, and I’ve taken advantage of quite a few, but it means adding things onto an already somewhat busy schedule. That week was intense…livestreams or videos from the time I got up until when I went to bed with the exception of the times I was teaching or some meals. I didn’t even finish all the videos, so I’m halfheartedly playing catchup this week, because everything goes offline this Sunday. I say halfheartedly because I definitely will watch all the main track videos but my original goal of watching all the videos isn’t likely to happen, and that’s okay.
I have two more courses I’m taking this month, and I’m looking forward to them both. I’ve gotten a lot of wonderful ideas and inspiration over the past year and my brain and heart are absolutely full of ideas on how to be a better teacher. I’m working through ideas in my head about what kind of teacher I want to be going forward and how to use and incorporate some new ideas I’ve learned.
I read an article recently about “drift” (that one of my friends had posted online). The idea behind “drift” is that you end up doing things in your life by just sort of “drifting” into them, rather than making deliberate choices. Going to grad school because it was next in life, getting married/having children because all your friends are, taking a good job offer because it seemed like a good job offer and others encouraged you, etc. I sort of drifted into teaching to supplement my income and because people thought I would be good at it. I never felt like one of those teachers that was really into it or loved it or any of that, but in the past year my attitude and approach has changed.
I have been immensely grateful for my ability to teach during the pandemic, and have found such satisfaction in my ability to relate to my students and help them through this time. It has changed my idea of my career and made me feel much more satisfied with what I’m doing.
On other notes: fun stuff! LIVE MUSIC! We bought symphony tickets for next season AND jazz tickets for next season. I have a band performance this Friday, and a concert with the Metropolitian Orchestra of St Louis on Sunday night. (I think I overextended myself this weekend, but it’ll be fine.) I find myself wanting to schedule and do things, and feeling like it’s a slippery slope back into the world of being too busy, yet I am ready to LIVE again, and I think (this may sound crazy but) I’d rather be out and about doing interesting things than sitting at home. The park near our house is doing fireworks this weekend so we have an outdoor party planned, and well, there’s just good things happening.
I watch the delta variant numbers with caution, and found the study out of Israel about the Pfizer vaccine being less effective against the delta variant to be concerning…but I will hold steady and hope that my Pfizer vaccine keeps me healthy, until the CDC tells me otherwise.
We have two more weekend getaways planned before the school year, one camping in a State Park, and a weekend stay in Southern Illinois at a little cabin on a pond. Between then and now, lots of teaching, reading, music, gardening, friends, etc.
I could start my post with all sorts of caveats, that I know it isn’t normal, that so many in the world are still struggling, etc. But, we are a fully vaccinated household, the vaccines are still working well against the variants, and we are doing things again and it is wonderful!
Not all of us are doing things all of the time
Louie is going to work in person most days. I have a lot of students coming to the house for lessons. It feels more like a workday when he is gone, so we both get more done.
We’ve done a few social activities, which is great! We had dinner with friends Saturday night, I had my first lunch with a friend date since the before times, and we went out to dinner last night at Louie in Demun for Louie’s stepdad’s birthday. (It was delicious, though we ate too much and then went to bed so I woke up in the night and tossed and turned a bit.)
This was on the wall behind me at Louie: it’s by Joshua Bell, a well known violinist At the opera!
We had purchased “Young Friends” tickets to Opera St Louis for Sunday night, and enjoyed a little picnic first and then saw Highway 1 by William Grant Still.
Our seats were not very good though!
Anyway, it’s been hectic here, but after a week in Arkansas it’s been a lot easier to handle it. I needed that break, and right now, I need another break, but I know it is coming up soon so I am doing well getting through my schedule. I think I’ll teach through July then like I said and take at least one more week off in August: I’m still waiting to hear more certainly when various family members might be visiting in August and that will inform my decision on time off. I’d love to take another trip somewhere, but I think it might just be a staycation with family visiting, with maybe some day trips.
We are planning to camp this weekend, however. I have reservations for two nights at Cuivre River State Park, but currently the weather is looking…not great! We’ll see what happens with the forecast over the next two days I guess. Thunderstorms and camping are not super fun, nor fun for the hiking we hoped to do on Saturday in between our camping nights. I made reservations because things get pretty full around here on the weekends, but who knows how the weather will be, right?
We’ve had some good stuff happening from the garden. We’ve been eating peas, chard, lettuce, and raspberries!
Day Lilies under the new tree.This lovely platter was a gift from Leslie. We enjoyed a home “happy hour” which just turned into dinner.
That’s it for now…people keep asking me do I have a lighter schedule in the summer. The answer is YES because I don’t have any 7:15 am classes, but I took a bunch of new private students, a few for probably year-round and a few for just summer lessons (keeping up between school orchestra years). I wanted to make sure to replace my graduating seniors, but many of my now-graduated seniors have not stopped lessons yet…so there are some busy teaching days! July is a bit lighter as people get more into camps and vacations, but I won’t fool myself. My schedule won’t be any lighter until I really make it so sometime. I have been fortunate during this time to have an incredibly full violin and viola studio with inquiries nearly every week for possible new students.
I have started 5 beginners in the past month and it’s been fun! I haven’t had so many beginners at once (not counting my school job) in over a decade, so it’s great to try some new strategies with old favorites. I could go on about how I teach beginners, but this isn’t a violin specific blog, so I won’t, but feel free to reach out 🙂
Keep your fingers crossed for the weather being decent this weekend! and tell me, what have you been up to this summer so far? Any interesting activities?
This is part 2 of our Arkansas Post-Covid Vaccination Trip. Go here for part 1, Two Nights in Little Rock.
It’s just about 1 hour drive from Little Rock to Hot Springs, so we did that rather easily. We couldn’t check into our Airbnb until after 3 pm, so we figured we would hit up the National Park first and see what there was to do and get the lay of the land.
Hot Springs National Park is unusual in that it is in the middle of the town of Hot Springs. Hot Springs is an interesting place, for sure, but it also is one of those places that you know has seen better days.
In a nutshell, there are a variety of bathhouses that are from the early 1900’s that have been preserved. The bathhouses were built to use the hot water from the hot springs in order to (the idea goes) improve people’s health. People came from far and wide to take baths and steam in the hot water fresh from the springs in Hot Springs. As time went on, this sort of thing fell out of fashion, and eventually the Park Service decided to preserve the houses for future generations. Only one bathhouse has been functioning the entire time and you can take baths there just like people did back in the day. Other houses have different purposes: a museum, a modern day spa, a store, a brewery, a small hotel, and more. They are all on one side of the street, called Bathhouse Row. On the other side of the street, there are all manner of tourist shops and restaurants, none of which are particularly good (yes, I’m a restaurant snob, but I also don’t need to buy any rocks on my vacation!) and the whole places feels a bit sad. Oh, and there are 4 lanes of traffic whizzing by with limited places to cross.
The National park is great! The surrounding infrastructure needs help. In addition to the bathhouses there is a hill with a grand promenade you can walk on, a variety of scenic drives through the surrounding mountains and quite a few hiking trails. The Park Service also did a great job with a bathhouse museum.
Things that could be improved: more crosswalks, perhaps less lanes to cross—why not make it a two lane road, widen sidewalks on both sides, more crosswalks (did I mention more crosswalks?) That would make it easier to go back and forth and ideally attract slightly more people to improve the eating establishments? Then, the brewery wasn’t open at all one of the days we were there: if you want this to be a tourist destination, day of the week must be irrelevant! And the bathhouse that functions like the old-timey bathhouses, Buckstaff Baths, are nearly impossible to reach via the phone. They need to work on that and answer the phones! Anyway, those are my actual suggestions…I also had other ideas like, add a herd of buffalo…I suppose part of the real problem is that visiting ARKANSAS just isn’t as exciting as visiting Colorado, Yellowstone, or France, and we now have easy access to hot tubs all over the country. But you know what, as you’ll see reading this and my other posts, it was a wonderful place to spend a week of vacation!
Anyway, back to the recap! We found parking easily and headed to Bathhouse Row. We arrived on Memorial Day, and it seemed pretty busy. The sun was shining and it was warm but not too hot. Perfect weather!
A view of bathhouse row. The buildings are each amazing in their own ways, beautiful architecture in a variety of styles.
The Fordyce Bathhouse was our first stop, as there was all manner of terrific information and brochures outside, and a wonderful museum about the history of the bathhouses inside.
I love when Parks do this: just give you ideas of what to do. I usually plan our activities in advance, but sometimes on a longer trip it is impossible to get it all ready and it’s so cool to be able to show up to a visitor’s center and say, okay, here are the cool things to do!
I should digress and say that I had been to Hot Springs before, as part of a road trip in 1989 with my family. I kept a diary of the trip, and gave four pages to Hot Springs. During that visit it seemed we camped at the Gulpha Gorge Campground and went to the museum as well. You can attempt to decipher my handwriting if you want: I did a great job describing the steps of the bath and also documented everything I ate. It starts on June 25.
We went into the museum, which was one way due to COVID. Masks were ambiguously required, so we wore them. It was neat to see all the steps of the baths, especially because…one of the activities we did have planned was a “traditional bathing package” at Buckstaff Baths the next morning.
The men’s floor had some elaborate sculptures and decor!
Where the water came in originally…supposedly…
After the museum, we walked around a bit, just to get a feel of things.
There are really quite a few trails. We followed some short ones, and then decided to do one of the scenic drives, the one around Hot Springs Mountain.
There were a few nice views, and at one point we decided to park and go off on foot on the Hot Springs Mountain Trail. It wasn’t terribly scenic (too many trees!) but it was very nice to walk around on. And it was very pretty!
There is a lookout tower on top of the mountain that you can go up for a price. We decided not to, but I’m sure the view is even nicer up there.
When you get to the end of the scenic drive, you go right by a spring that you can drink from. We filled up some water bottles, and yes, the water WAS very nice! Some of it is hot, some of it isn’t, and it all seemed to taste very clean.
We checked into our Airbnb next. The description said you could walk to the bathhouses, but a few commenters thought that wasn’t the best idea. I had thought we would, but we decided against it…it was a long walk through a less exciting neighborhood. However, it was a perfectly lovely place to stay and was a very short drive from the action.
We decided to have dinner at the brewery since it wasn’t open the next day. We had eaten a very early lunch so we were hungry earlier, and off we went.
The Superior Brewery is in an old bathhouse, which means there are old tile floors everywhere. It was pretty cool, even though we were sort of put in a less exciting room that we’d hoped for. We split a beer sampler and each got a sandwich. It was a fun time!
As we are old people, we went home after dinner and a short walk, and ended up watching TV.
The next morning we woke up to get ready for our baths at Buckstaff Baths. We ended up being ready to go early, so we drove up the other mountain, West Mountain, first, and just stopped at a few viewpoints. It was a rainy/foggy morning.
It was easy to find parking in town at a huge garage which was free and conveniently located. We were still early, so we walked around a bit more and looked at the various nooks and crannies of Bathhouse Row.
Our appointment for Buckstaff Baths was at 10:30 am, and they meant it, not a minute early. So we waited a few minutes, and then everybody who had the 10:30 am time waited in line to get our hands sanitized and fill out forms. Like, literally, they kept wiping down the table in between parties…I totally get businesses are having COVID protocols, but this would all be done if we all just got vaccinated, or if businesses could say, okay, just show your vaccine card and then we don’t have to pretend that taking your temperature and using hand sanitizer will stop the spread of COVID, when the thing that really stops it is the vaccine some of us have gotten…but I digress.
There are separate men’s and women’s floors, so Louie and I said adieu to each other and went our separate ways. (Pandemic living: it is still often weird not seeing him for a few hours). They take you up an elevator to a row of dressing rooms that look like they are from 1912, which they ARE. Buckstaff Baths has been in continuous operation as a bathhouse since then, with limited remodeling, though it was very clean and well taken care of. You get undressed and put your things in a locker and then the attendant wraps you in a sheet, toga style. You go into the next room and get into a bath (this was all described in my journal entries from 1989), and the water is pretty hot. Your attendant helps you get into the bath (be prepared to be undressed in front of her) and then you relax for 20 minutes. They may bring you hot spring water to drink, and you have a loofah to scrub with if you like.
Next you get out and go to an area with places to lie down, and they put hot towels under you and over you, and you lie there and continue relaxing. They will put a cool towel over your face. Next was the steam cabinet, where you sit in literally a cabinet, but have your head out, and you steam. Then you sit in a sitz bath, which is a tiny bathtub you yes, sit in. For me, all of the things in this paragraph I did wearing a sheet, though not always the same one, but Louie said in the men’s baths they were mostly totally naked for these parts. I suppose they think women are more modest. Lastly is the needle shower, a shower with dozens or perhaps hundreds of little needles of water coming at you from all directions.
After that they might take you to a cooling room, but I went straight into my 20 minute massage, which was part of the “traditional bathing package”. Louie ended up waiting in the cooling room for nearly 30 minutes, so I finished first and waited for him outside.
For obvious reasons I didn’t take any photos in the bathhouse, but it was lots of tile and marble and old timey looking stuff. I loved it and would highly recommend! It is really difficult to get in touch with them though, so plan ahead and keep calling. I think I booked about 6 to 8 weeks in advance, but I don’t know if that is necessary.
After our baths we were quite hungry, but wanted to get out of the downtown area for a bit, so we headed out to a restaurant that was near Lake Hamilton. That restaurant ended up being closed, but we found a nearby Mexican place called Jose’s and had a lovely lunch. We decided to visit Garvin Woodland Gardens next which was about 15 minutes away from the restaurant.
The gardens were really beautiful! They were lush and green and full of plants, well thought out, and wonderful to walk through.
There were various paths and bridges to take. We saw a lovely pond with koi which were fun to watch.
You can see it was rainy looking…we had umbrellas with us, but hoped it would hold off.
The gardens were right next to Lake Hamilton and had a few miles of trails that went further from the visitor’s center.
There was an area called the Children’s Gardens with a cave and a huge wooden structure called the Tree House and other neat stuff. We enjoyed it! This picture is taken from inside the cave.
The Treehouse from outside and from inside.
We decided to extend our walk onto a little connected almost island area which was called the Hixson Nature Preserve. It started raining after we walked for a bit though, but we were glad to have our umbrellas.
Until it started pouring, and then we were glad to be wearing shorts, and finally it was thundering and we were just walking as fast as we could to get back to the regular part of the gardens and ideally some sort of shelter.
Just as we were getting back to the Treehouse area we came across a garden employee driving a golf cart, who informed us that the gardens were closed due to the storm and we should head back to the visitor’s center to either wait it out, or we could ask for a refund. Well, DUH it was storming. What he did not do was offer us a ride back! So we got a little further and there was a pavilion of sorts so we stopped under it to take a little break from the rain, and then finally headed the rest of the way back. We didn’t ask for a refund because we had already seen all of the islands anyway, and so we just left.
The pavilion where we rested, which seems to host events and such. I believe it was called the Garvan Pavilion.
After the garden we both just wanted to be drier, so we headed back to our airbnb and cleaned up. We decided to relax a bit, and after awhile headed out for dinner.
We decided to have dinner at Rolando’s which served South American food. When we first got there it was a bit too crowded, so they told us to come back in 30 minutes. We went to walk around, but popped in at the Hot Springs Winery a few doors down and ended up doing a tasting and then purchasing a few bottles. The employee who helped us was super nice and friendly, and it was a nice thing to do while waiting for dinner.
Dinner was good. At this point it was pouring rain outside so we were just glad to be inside!
But also glad to eat some fish tacos, shrimp quesadillas and drink a couple of margaritas. After dinner we went home and watched TV: we watched Unorthodox on Netflix during this segment of the trip.
The next morning we woke up early due to a rooster crowing. He had been crowing the previous morning, but was extra excited this morning. I forgot to add that there was a stray cat around outside that had had food the first night but none the second night, and she was begging us for food for herself and her two kittens who were nearby. I can’t believe I didn’t a take a picture! Louie was heartbroken because we didn’t have any food, but I assume she will be okay: they all looked pretty well fed, not overly so, but good for feral cats. Hopefully whoever left the food will return, or she’ll make it on her own. (We were unclear by something our host had said, whether he was feeding them or if others were.) We checked out of our place then (which just meant we loaded up and left the key in the lockbox, love it) and had one more luxury planned.
Our airbnb in Hot Springs. It was the middle apartment of a triplex, and while it was nice, it was probably the least interesting place we stayed.
We went to Quapaw Bathhouse next, for the Quapaw package for couples. We had decided to splurge a bit on our vacation as we hadn’t done much of anything all year long. The Quapaw package had a couples bath, a massage, and a foot/scalp massage. We checked in and got changed into robes, and then were taken to our bath. This was a modern bath, a large jacuzzi tub, and we got to spend 20 minutes in it relaxing, then we were given cucumber water and sat around a bit. Next we went to another place to sit around, and finally were taken in for our massages. The massage and foot/scalp massage were one after the other and it was very nice and relaxing. The building was obviously modernized but the area with the baths still had many aspects from the past, but since I was in a robe and didn’t have my phone with me, I didn’t get any pictures either. We both really enjoyed our time at the Quapaw Bathhouse and Spa, but agreed if we had to pick one day, we would do the Buckstaff because it was more unique.
After that, we said goodbye to Hot Springs and headed north. Our next stop was a remote cabin in the Ozarks and was supposed to be about a 3 hour drive, so we planned to arrive by dinner. We had to get some groceries for the cabin, so we stopped at a Walmart about 30 minutes north and then after another hour or so ended up stopping at one more Mexican restaurant for lunch! We decided we had finally gotten caught up on eating at Mexican places after that: we both love Mexican food and hadn’t been to restaurants in so long it seemed like we were making up for lost time, but after the third one in a row we felt satiated, ha!
Let me know if you’ve been to Hot Springs and how your visit compared! Or if now you plan to go to check it out for yourself.
School’s out! I survived the year of teaching before school classes! It hasn’t hit me yet that I don’t have to wake up at 5:45 am again until September, but it will once…I don’t have to wake up so early.
For those reading, my studio recital on Sunday went really well. It was hot but no rain in sight, and occasionally a lovely breeze. Most people seemed to be happy to be there and had a good time. I’m SO glad I took a risk and did the recital outside, and I may do it again in the future because I personally thought it was fun. It might not have been the serious musical experience one gets inside, what with all the extra noises from people, sirens, and helicopters, but it was still a good performance opportunity.
Today is my last day of work for a week, yay! We are hitting the road for a bit and taking the week off to do so. When I get back I have a bunch of new students, some for only the summer and one or two who might be long term. I’m doing a fair amount of teaching this summer, which I hope I don’t regret. June will end up being pretty busy between this trip, a weekend camping trip, seeing an opera, and doing two online teaching seminars before we leave again to visit my sister and her family in western New York. It’s so wonderful to be able to travel again and go to restaurants and teach students in person. I hope as more and more get vaccinated that our COVID numbers really go down: there are still 1000 people dying a day, and that is ridiculous with the efficacy of the vaccine. Get vaccinated or wear a mask, please!
I have had to say goodbye to a few students this year. It was probably my biggest graduating “class” yet, with 4 high school seniors, two college seniors, and one grad student. I also am leaving Lindenwood University so I will miss some of those students too, and a few others moved away this year as well. (This is also why I’ve been taking some new ones!).
The cats are really enjoying their catio. Louie put a little cat door on it too, so that it can be open while the air conditioning is on inside. It has taken them some time to get used to the cat door though.
I will say, it’s been weird getting ready to leave town. We haven’t gone anywhere in ages…I suppose we don’t travel that much, compared to many…but I’m really looking forward to getting out of town. I know we traveled some last summer when others didn’t, but I hadn’t spent a night not at my house since we got back from our camping trip last August. I’m excited to see somewhere new!
